It is heartening to run across an article like Watching Whales Watching Us, which celebrates the qualities, intelligence – and, yes – the emotions of a non-human species.

In the warm lagoons off the Baja coast, where whales come in the winter and early spring to birth calves, there is a history of whale hunting, nearly to extinction, from the not so distant past. But something mysterious is happening here in the present; whales have seemingly become very social, approaching boats along with their calves and interacting readily with humans.

Frohoff responded: "Those are the kinds of things that for the longest time a scientist wouldn't dare consider. But thank goodness we've gone through a kind of cognitive revolution when it comes to studying the intelligence and emotion of other species. In fact, I'd say now that it is my obligation as a scientist not to discount that possibility. We do have compelling evidence of the experience of grief in cetaceans; and of joy, anger, frustration and distress and self-awareness and tool use; and of protecting not just their young but also their companions from humans and other predators. So these are reasons why something like forgiveness is a possibility. And even if it's not that exactly, I believe it's something. That there's something very potent occurring here from a behavioral and a biological perspective."

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